With proper training, and maybe a bit of experience on the debate team, it’s easy to recognize logical fallacies in an opponent’s argument. When it comes to popular give and take, the sort of thing we have so much of now on opinion websites and news channels, there hasn’t been decent preparation for arguments outside the columns and blog posts of Jonah Goldberg.

In The Tyranny of Cliches, the National Review contributor, syndicated columnist, author of the bestseller Liberal Fascism, and American Enterprise Institute fellow, convincingly demolishes the Left’s oft-repeated, bumper-sticker slogans that seemingly defy repudiation by many who fear being depicted as a heartless jackanape.

For example, if an impassioned public figure pleads that yet another government expansion and encroachment is “for the children” it is therefore ipso facto in the best interests of everyone. This is a “case-closed” logical fallacy that circumvents rational discussion by declaring that if millions of cute kids benefit, only meanies, bullies, or some contemporary amalgamation of Attila the Hun, Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, and Darth Vader could oppose it.

Not so fast. Goldberg’s new book wonderfully dissects such liberal shibboleths as “social justice,” “diversity,” attacks on organized religion in general and Roman Catholicism in particular, and “separation of church and state” to reveal the hollowness within. In this regard, Goldberg resembles most William F. Buckley, with the difference that the latter stood athwart history yelling stop, and the former stands astride postmodernism to scream “enough!”(more…)

I came across this news story via Catholic World News. And this intriguing passage about President Carter’s disagreements with Pope John Paul II:

Carter wrote that he exchanged harsh words with the late Pope John Paul II during a state visit over what Carter classified as the Pope’s “perpetuation of the subservience of women.” He added, “there was more harshness when we turned to the subject of ‘liberation theology’.”

I haven’t read the book, so I’m awfully curious to know just how the former President of the United States of America, who was at the time in the middle of fighting the Cold War, defended liberation theology to the Polish Pontiff, who knew the evils of Marxism first-hand. I have little doubt who won the argument, however.

It’s also striking to read that Carter, widely considered the most religious President we’ve had in recent American history and a decent man of good works like Habitat for Humanity, supports same-sex “marriage,” artificial contraception, taxpayer funding of international “family planning” services and embryonic stem cell research, which involves the taking of innocent human life. In other words, he takes the same side on these debates as the most hardened, radical atheist imaginable. Just what kind of Christianity does Carter believe in?

You won’t easily find this kind of muddled thinking and sheer inconsistency matched with moral self-righteousness anywhere else. And if that’s the kind of “Christian” president who can get elected, I’d prefer to vote for a politician who’s quiet about his faith but who’s on the right side of these extremely important non-negotiable issues. Oh, and we know how Carter’s foreign policy and economics worked out, don’t we? What a sham.

On The American Spectator, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg examines how the left wages “a war of rejection and rationalization against whatever contradicts their mythologies.” Which explains why leftists get into a snit when you point out factual details like how Communist regimes “imprisoned, tortured, starved, experimented upon, enslaved, and exterminated millions” throughout the 20th century. And it makes it so much harder to wear that Che Guevara t-shirt without being mocked in public. Gregg:

Overall, the left has been remarkably successful in distorting people’s knowledge of Communism’s track-record. Everyone today knows about the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. Yet does anyone doubt that far fewer know much about the atrocities ordered by the likes of Lenin, Castro, Mao, and Pol Pot? Do those Occupy Wall Street protesters waving red hammer-and-sickle flags actually understand what such symbols mean for those who endured Communism?

But while the left’s response to such awkward queries won’t likely change, the unanswered question is why so many left-inclined politicians and intellectuals play these games.

Part of the answer is the very human reluctance of anyone to acknowledge the dark side of movements with which they have some empathy. Even today, for example, there are Latin Americans inclined to make excuses for the right-wing death-squads — the infamous Escuadrón de la Muerte — that wrought havoc in Central America throughout the 1970s and ’80s.

The sheer scale of denial among progressivists, however, suggests something else is going on. I think it owes much to the left’s claim to a monopoly of moral high-mindedness.

There remains an experience of incomparable value. We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled – in short, from the perspective of those who suffer. The important thing is neither that bitterness nor envy should have gnawed at the heart during this time, that we should have come to look with new eyes at matters great and small, sorrow and joy, strength and weakness, that our perception of generosity, humanity, justice and mercy should have become clearer, freer, less corruptible. We have to learn that personal suffering is a more effective key, a more rewarding principle for exploring the world in thought and action than personal good fortune. This perspective from below must not become the partisan possession of those who are eternally dissatisfied; rather, we must do justice to life in all its dimensions from a higher satisfaction, whose foundation is beyond any talk of ‘from below’ or ‘from above’. This is the way in which we may affirm it.

Preacher of the prosperity gospel and swindler of poor Brazilians Bishop Edir Macedo was charged last week with embezzeling hundreds of millions of dollars from his Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. Until I read about the case (h/t Get Religion), I didn’t realize that the prosperity gospel had much of a foothold outside American Pentecostal traditions. It makes perfect sense though that it should be the heir to liberation theology in Latin America.

The Catholic Church fought back against the false anthropology of liberation theology, and it is no longer the problem in South America that it was, but preachers like Macedo have stepped in to deliver the same old message to the continent’s poor: that their poverty and the injustice in their lives are the primary concern of Christian religion. This is a debasement of the Gospel, and it is theft — those who are taken in by the prosperity gospel are deprived of the fullness of Revelation.

As it turns out, they’re also defrauded. Macedo, whose estimated worth is higher than two billion dollars (at least for now…), seems to have stolen more directly from his flock, preying upon them in a way that liberation theologians never did.

On the other hand, we have the Acton approach to poverty, which is one of empowerment, and which has its sure basis in human nature. In order to vanquish poverty, a society must create wealth — economics is not the zero-sum game of Marxist theory, nor is Macedo’s collection plate a high-return investment opportunity. Economic growth comes only from the productive work of men and women whose work is, in the words of Rev. Robert A. Sirico, “akin to God’s creative activity as we read it in the book of Genesis.”

This vocation is marginalized by liberation theology and the prosperity gospel, which tell their followers that the end of work is a paycheck, and that can be got in other ways too — by class warfare or by manna from heaven. The terribly cruelty is that these lies perpetuate a cycle of poverty.

Unlike some of our political leaders and media pundits, the gospel does not make false distinctions between the “makers” and the “takers,” the deserving and the undeserving or the hard-working and the hardly-working. Instead, we are told that the first Christians had all things in common. They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. In other words, no person had too little and no person had too much, whether or not their means were greater or lesser. Applied to our capitalist society, this is a dubious economic philosophy. Applied as a compassionate ethic, it supplies a model of shared sacrifice that Buffett calls for in our taxation system.

A much more reliable guide to understanding why and how the earliest Christians shared their possessions is Jaroslav Pelikan’s commentary on Acts. Pelikan, author of the five-volume work The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, actually does see a distinction between the “makers” and the “takers.” Perhaps a better description of these first Christians would be “givers.” Pelikan points to the very different historical situation that developed for the Church as it grew, including a role for the state in providing “mutual support.” But the Book of Acts was never intended as a template for tax policy, even less so in the 21st Century. (emphasis mine in the following Pelikan quote):

Paul’s words to the Corinthians provide another key to the accounts in Acts of the mutual support of the members of Christ’s family, with their stipulation that in giving “according to their means … and beyond their means” the Macedonians acted “of their own free will.”

On the narrow basis solely of the descriptions earlier in Acts, “all who believed … had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all” (2:44-45), and again, “there was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet; and the distribution was made to eash as any had need” (4:34-35), it would be difficult to tell whether these were instances of contribution or of confiscation. But a careful review of the longest sustained account of the process, the tragic story of Ananias and Sapphhira (5:1-11) makes it clear that the property and its proceeds remained “at your disposal” (5:4), so that here, too, the support was an act of their own free will. The report in the immediately following chapter, that “the Hellenists murmured against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution” (6:1) provides at least a glimpse into the practical difficulties attendant on such mutual support.

Significantly, the author of Acts prefaces that glimpse with the explanation that “in these days … the disciples were increasing in number” (6:1). This can be seen as an anticipation of the vast complications that were to follow in the subsequent centuries, when the sheer size and the geographical spread of the Christian movement made such a direct and simple response to famine as is described here difficult to administer, and then when the Christianization of the Roman Empire brought about the reallocation of responsibility for “mutual support among the members of Christ’s family” between the state and the church and the monastic communities.

The Universidad Francisco Marroquín is webcasting a celebration of the life of Manuel “Muso” Ayau, its founder, live on Sunday, Sept. 12, at 1 p.m. local time. Watch the event here. The University also has published a special web page dedicated to the legacy of Ayau, with videos and other resources.

The following appreciation of the life and work of Ayau is from Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president and co-founder of the Acton Institute:

When in January of 1990 I was invited to present a paper at the Mont Pelerin Society in Antigua, Guatemala, I had no idea that the visit to this small Central American country, and the people I would meet at the conference, would have such a lasting effect on me and the work I would end up doing the following two decades.

The president of the Mont Pelerin Society that year was Manual Ayau, known as Muso to his friends, among which I would be honored to be numbered.

Muso had a testy relationship with the Church. Although his daughter was a nun (in fact, the foundress of a monastery with a ministry to orphaned children), Muso found the opinions of numerous clergy on economic matters to be superficial at best and odious at worse, His special ire was directed at proponents of the attempted Christian-Marxist hybrid, Liberation Theology, which he saw as lending a moral patina to the socialist experiments his nation and much a Latin America suffer from.

So it was amusing to see Muso’s delighted reception of my speech in Antigua in which I endeavored to take apart the various fallacies of liberation theology: anthropological, theological and economic. At first his seems incredulous that priest could invoke Mises or Hayek, but he soon warmed up and invited me to join him on a speaking tour of remote parts of his country during his run at the presidency of Guatemala. Is country is worse off for not having elected him.

Muso was a man gifted with keen entrepreneurial talents which was not merely direct at building businesses: He used them to build a movement of ideas in a hostile environment.

Along with a band of brothers, Muso saw the effects of poverty in their homeland, and the ideology of the Fabian movement that would insure its continuance. This band of brothers, whom Muso described as “rebellious improvisers,” began a counter movement with the translations of solid books making the case for the free society. They formed, in 1959, one of the first think tanks in Latin America to promote the free economy, The Center for Social and Economic Studies.

Muso’s crowning achievement, and other than his family, his lasting legacy, will be the Universidad Francisco Marroquín, from which I had the honor of receiving an honorary doctorate at Muso’s hands. This university, one of the finest in Latin America, is guided by a clear philosophy of human liberty and organized in such a way to ensure that all who complete its curriculum grasp the interconnection between economic and personal liberty and the practical implementation of these principles in their respective spheres of influence.

Convinced that in order for a given society to appreciate the principles of human freedom, it was necessary for its leaders to be imbued with these ideas. The UFM today churns out young business and academic leaders who are capable of defending the free society.

Muso was as friendly as he was contentious; a man of vision and accomplishment, he could also be humble and an attentive listener.

Muso passed into eternity with his beloved wife Olga at his bedside and will be buried on the grounds of the monastery where it was his wish to watch these little, abandoned ones in the care of his daughter, Mother Inez Ayau at the orphanage she founded. A great champion for the cause of liberty has departed this world, leaving our hearts a bit dimmer. May the Author of Freedom grant him eternal repose in His presence.

Time to set the record straight. Some of the comments on my original posting of Faith McDonnell’s article Embracing the Tormentors are representative of the sort of egregious moral relativism, spin doctoring, and outright falsification, that have for so long characterized the “social justice” programs of lefty ecumenical groups like the WCC and NCC. Then, for good measure, let’s have some of these commenters toss in a dollop of hate for Israel and claim that this nation, which faces an existential threat from autocratic Arab regimes frequently and publicly reminding us of their plans to annihilate the Jews or drive them into the sea, is not a democracy. Really? Compared to what? Iran or Syria?

Recall, if you didn’t take time to actually read the article (read the article!), the words of Christian poet and patriot Armando Valladares, who was imprisoned for 22 years in Fidel Castro’s island Gulag. In accepting IRD’s 1983 Religious Freedom Award, he said this:

The honor which you bestow upon me today will have special significance for Cuba’s political prisoners….During those years, with the purpose of forcing us to abandon our religious beliefs and demoralize us, the Cuban communist indoctrinators repeatedly used the statements of support for Castro’s revolution made by some representatives of American Christian churches. Every time that a pamphlet was published in the United States, every time a clergyman would write an article in support of Fidel Castro’s dictatorship, a translation would reach us and that was worse for the Christian political prisoners than the beatings or the hunger.

While we waited for the solidarity embrace from our brothers in Christ, incomprehensively to us, those who were embraced were our tormentors…. the Christians in Cuba’s prisons suffer not only the pain of torture and isolation but also the conviction that they have been deserted by their brothers in faith.

Thanks to commenter Neal Lang for reminding us of the Red Terror in Spain. The Spaniards were only following the program of extermination, the destruction of the faith, that was devised by the Bolsheviks and Stalinists. This article cites a Russian report placing the number of deaths of clergy, religious and lay leaders at 200,000 during the Soviet regime. It started early: (more…)

Joseph D. Martinez, a 2008 alum of Acton’s Toward a Free and Virtuous Society program, produced a great video to introduce readers to my new book, Liberating Black Theology (now in the Acton Book Shoppe. Buy it here). Thanks, Joe!